News

Australian at the Gates

Daniel Meadows, a 25-year-old Australian from Brisbane, says it has "always been a dream" of his to visit the United States. But his attempt to come here turned into a nightmare when he was handcuffed at Detroit Metro Airport, subjected to hours of questioning, taken to a nearby Homeland Security detention center, and then thrown out of the country the next day on what he calls baseless and vague suspicions.

Meadows's story is far from unusual, and far from the worst example of harsh treatment, unwarranted detention, and groundless deportation of foreign visitors. What makes his case different is that he decided to document his experience on YouTube.

Upon returning, Meadows posted a video, now watched over 34,000 times, relating his experience with visible emotion, running the gamut from humiliation to disbelief, anger to amusement.

"I hope you take a few minutes to read my story," he announces in the video, "because I feel your government has become so paranoid and irrational about the threat of terror and possible international illegals that it will treat visitors disrespectfully and like criminals upon entry without a thought."

Meadows, who regularly posts all kinds of content on YouTube— including one humor short that was featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann—under the name DrLemur, says he has received much media interest, as well as an outpouring of sympathy in response to his story.

"I've just been flooded with e-mails from people from all over the world with their own stories to tell," he told VF Daily over email, "from those who feel they have been racially profiled to regular American citizens themselves who have had issues re-entering their own country for the most ridiculous and obscure reasons." One viewer's feedback pointed him in the direction of this shocking Washington Post exposé about the U.S. government's drugging of deported foreigners.

Homeland Security did not return VF Daily's requests to comment on Meadows and the impact of his video.

"I have actually had a number of people tell me they wanted to post videos of their experiences as responses to mine," says Meadows. "Some are already working on filming them at the moment. Some of these people are just viewers who don't post videos to the net, and I was actually thinking about helping a few out."